While science and experience have long confirmed that sleep is essential to our
physical and mental health, exciting new discoveries about the physiology and
chemistry of sleep help to explain why sleep is peak time for maintenance and
repair of our mind and body—most visibly, our skin.
We know that sleep restores energy supplies that have been depleted through
the day’s activities. Sleep is also the time when the body does most of its
repair work; tissues, such as the skin’s collagen and connective tissue, are
rebuilt and restored. That’s why sleep is the ideal time for external and
internal treatments that stimulate skin’s renewal and provide the body with
the building blocks needed for repair.
During sleep, the body also increases its rate of cell division and protein
synthesis, prime markers for repair and restoration. Because these
processes are part of an overall acceleration in your anabolic metabolism,
sleep also serves as an opportunity to repair cell damage caused by free
radicals released during the metabolic process. That’s why internal
supplementation and external application of antioxidants during sleep
are exceptionally effective.
Because lost sleep means lost cellular repair time, we can also lose tone in
our muscles and skin when we lose sleep or sleep poorly. It is important to
understand that sleep deprivation is not just the consequence of insomnia
or too few hours devoted to sleep. Sleep deprivation also occurs when we
have “shallow” sleep that is prone to frequent interruptions. With shallow
sleep we are often in a near waking state and don’t get the deep “REM”
sleep we need to boost cellular repair.
Lack of sleep also leads to a degeneration in our immune response, a
reduction in metabolism that leads to unwanted fat storage and an
impairment to our endocrine system—which generates the hormones that
regulate our entire body. These adverse changes are almost always visible
on our vulnerable facial skin in the form of sallow tone, sagging, under-eye
dark circles, dryness and even acne breakouts.
